Beginning in 1957 with the release of his directorial debut The Left Handed Gun, Arthur Penn (b. 1922) quickly became an iconoclastic and influential American film director. Moving deftly between comedy and tragedy, realism and absurdity, his films Mickey One, Bonnie and Clyde, Alice's Restaurant, Little Big Man, and Night Moves speak to the troubled times--the 1960s and 1970s--in which they were made while remaining timeless in their unsettling portrayal of characters on the margins of society.

Arthur Penn: Interviews is the first...